Smiledives - A Dental health awareness campaign Ahmed Naxeem

Project Breif: Open Wide Make going to the dentist as desirable as going to the gym or having your hair done.

THE MESSAGE: Dental diseases or bad teeth can have a considerable impact on self-esteem, but we will do anything to avoid going to the dentist. This mind-set needs changing.
OUTPUT: Anything that will get people talking positively about going to the dentist, be it press, posters, twitter, facebook… Target Audience: Maldivians - Late teens and young adults.

Insight: Maldivians don’t go to the dentist because they are less informed about the importans of dental care. Regular visits to the dentist is a rare thing.

What I’m going to do: Create a webiste with information about dental care and use a poster campaign to promote it.

Concept: Use the old folklore bedtime story in Maldives “Santhi-mariyanbu vaahaka” to get people to think about the subject.

Target Audience: Youth.

The Story:: One day two best friends Anga-madu-mithuru (The less talkative friend) and Anga-gadha-mithuru (The more talkative friend) ate maafuh (a kind of sweet short eat) to their full and were resting on the holhuashi (a bench of some sort or resting place). Anga-madu-mithuru brushed his teeth before going to rest but Anga-gadha-mithuru did not do so. They both fell asleep after a short while on the holhuashi, little did they know it was the night that Santhi-mariyanbu (a female supernatural being with a sac full of teeth) comes to see who went to sleep without brushing their teeth.

At midnight Santhi-mariyanbu came out of the sea, she started going from house to house to see if anyone went to sleep without brushing their teeth. She can smell the ones who brushed and who didn’t. She replaces the teeth of those who sleep with their teeth brushed with white teeth and those who don’t with bad teeth. On her way she passed by Anga-gadha-mithuru and Anga-madu-mithuru. She saw how nicely ¬Anga-madu-mithuru was sleeping and she was going to replace his teeth with white teeth because he slept with his teeth brushed. But after seeing how nicely he was sleeping she thought she will replace his teeth with golden ones. Anga-madu-mithuru work up when Santhi-mariyanbu was replacing his teeth. He kept quiet. Next she found that Anga-gadha-mithuru was sleeping without brushing his teeth, so she replaced his teeth with bad ones.

The next morning when the two friends work up, Anga-gadha-mithuru saw that his friend had golden teeth, so he asked what happened. After knowing the story Anga-gadha-mithuru wanted golden teeth as well, so the next night he repeated the same thing and this time brushed his teeth and slept on the holhuashi. He was awake when Santhi-mariyanbu came and when she started to replace his teeth because he has brushed and slept, she was going to replace with silver teeth. Anga-gadha-mithuru because he is talkative told her to put golden teeth instead. After hearing this Santhi-mariyanbu got so angry that she threw the whole sac of teeth on his face and disappeared. The next morning he had teeth all over his face.

I took three parts from the story to create two posters and a website banner.

The supernatural being coming carrying a bag full of teeth. (poster 1)
The supernatural being going into a house. (poster 2)
The supernatural being throwing the bag towards a person. (website banner)

Branding

I developed a brand, ‘Smiledives’, a play around Smile Maldives. I used letters and a smiley face to make the logo. All characters are san-serif and have soft edges. Letters are straight with the same stroke size. All of this to give the logo a modern look and the smiley face to make it playful as the target audience is the youth. I chose a blue for the letters to represent the vast ocean and the sky, green and orange in the smiley face to represent trees and the sun respectively.